Every day I experience life in the world of healthcare IT, supporting 3000 doctors, 18000 faculty, and 3 million patients. In this blog I record my experiences with infrastructure, applications, policies, management, and governance as well as muse on such topics such as reducing our carbon footprint, standardizing data in healthcare, and living life to its fullest.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Building Unity Farm Sanctuary - Third Week of March 2017

With every passing day, Unity Farm Sanctuary increases its capacity to host public educational sessions, retreats, and events. Our first few months were focused on the historical Unity Hall building. As you’ll see in the photographs below, we’ve made substantial progress. The next few months will be focused on expanding our capacity to give "forever homes" to animals in our community. A design, which works for just about every species we’ll encounter, is done. By May it will be a reality.

Here’s a view of the rooms of the Sanctuary, all assembled from local basements, attics, and donations.

As you enter the original 1833 door, you come upon the meeting room, which is where the weekly meditation group gathers and where we host lectures about diverse topics such as sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and animal care.

The kitchen and surrounding breakfast room is where our volunteers gather for early morning coffee (we have a commercial Bunn coffee machine for an endless pot of organic blends). We will be hosting farm to table events using all Unity Farm products starting this Spring.

The office is where we interview volunteers, have private meetings, and arrange animal placements. The 1760's grandfather clock is still accurate to the second.

The dining room has been restored with its original lighting fixtures, gas lamps converted to electricity.

The library is filled with animal care books and natural artifacts from the surrounding ecosystem.

The bedrooms upstairs are where people stay during our retreats and overnight events. We’ve completed the restoration of 4 rooms thus far.

In the Schoolhouse bedroom, you’ll find a desk from the early 1800s where a local student spilled ink while practicing penmanship on the wood - he/she wrote "Boston, Concord, Eastport (a historical reference to Cape Cod)" in perfect script. The low post bed is a New England country style design found in rural homes during the second half of the 18th Century.

In the French bedroom, you’ll find an 1800’s french bed (which I rebuilt to modern mattress sizing) and a collection of 1700’s horse lithographs

In the Pineapple bedroom, you’ll find a chest owned by an 1800’s Brown University professor and a traditional New England pineapple bed, as well as an 1800’s rocking horse.

Next week, I'll post photographs of the Williamsburg bedroom with it’s 1760’s bed and clawfoot bathtub. We’re restoring the room color paint to an early 1800’s grey-blue.

The loft is a 1000 square foot space with a distressed wood floor looking out over the horse paddocks. The yoga classes, silent retreats, and art events are held here.

By April, our work on the buildings will be done and we’ll focus on the new new animal rescue areas. When we plan a paddock and run in, we pay special attention to manure management, rotation of animals so that the land has a chance to recover, and utilities (electical/water). Here’s a map of that shows the new acre of animal areas between the farmhouse and the sanctuary. We’ve given a great deal of thought to workflow, so that volunteers can easily move animals from paddock to paddock without difficulty. You’ll see that every care area is connected with lanes and gates, so that no volunteer can lose an animal.

Palmer the turkey is really adapting well and he’s a well established member of the community. In a few weeks, we’ll hear about possible donkey and sheep adoption. In the meantime, we continue to support all the creatures of Unity Farm Sanctuary in the cold, wind and snow of the waning 2017 winter.